Inside the army base where Britain's brave Afghan allies are finally being welcomed

Arriving in the darkness, the packed coach passes through the imposing metal fence and pulls up on a remote and silent army base.

- HOLLY BANCROFT

Shuffled off the coach one by one, the group of men, women and children are taken to a large hall, before being handed, among other items, a tube of toothpaste.

One woman is 38 weeks pregnant, desperate for a safe place to bring her child into the world. Others have been waiting more than a year to find sanctuary. Finally, they are in the UK.

“Now we feel like we are home,” one Afghan father, who spent a year in a hotel in Pakistan waiting for relocation to the UK, told The Independent. “We are feeling better and out of pressure. We have been waiting for this moment, thinking of the day when we would arrive in the UK, and fortunately we are here now.”

This man is one of more than 1,000 Afghans staying temporarily at MoD Garats Hay in Leicestershire because of their years of service alongside the British armed forces in the war against the Taliban. All, like him, have been eligible to come to the UK for months – sometimes years – but have only been brought to Britain in recent weeks as part of a secretive Ministry of Defence operation, codenamed Operation Lazurite.

On 28 September, word went out to B Company, 3rd Battalion Parachute Regiment, that they had 72 hours to mobilise Garats Hay – a base in the countryside 12 minutes drive from Loughborough – to welcome hundreds of Afghan families.

MoD Garats Hay is based on the old Beaumanor estate, which was requisitioned by the War Office in 1939 and used as a radio intercept station. After the war, it was used by the Royal Signals until 1998.